Mohacsy's Safe Portfolio Member Forum

[Elroy Jetson]

Photolithography is indeed a Rube-Goldberg sort of machine - just an extremely precise photograph printer using extreme-ultra-violet light - but just the light exposure with the negative and printing paper part of the printing.

Air-tight tubs whisk away the EUV exposed silicon chips to the etching and photo-resist and deposition processing, washing and drying inside other machines. Bring them back for repeated light exposures with different negatives (aka reticules). Then finally the cutting up the wafers and wiring to connectors and cases.

So far these machines have only becomes far more complex and costly with each new smaller chip iteration.


Humans should try to warp their minds around Intel's planned Directed Self Assembly using statistics and physics to create integrated circuit features. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_assembly_of_micro-_and_nano-structures Like an inorganic DNA.

Intel will use the ASML and other integrated circuit machines lay down layers, then apply energy (light, acoustics, magnetic or electrical) to free the layers to assemble themselves into their preferred useful shapes.

Like laying out building materials on a building site and applying sound waves to make the materials dance into a house. Only happens at microscopic levels under special conditions.

Until recently we were not too far removed from our ancestors who make most of their own tools with their own hands, learned from a parent or skilled craftsman. This is light-years of complexity removed from that world.